VOLSUNG Initiative
For the most part, research into the creation and deployment of "supersoldier" warfighters was mostly undertaken by the Navy, and produced some spectacular successes. The original Project ORION was taken over from the Colonial Military Administration, and converted into the SPARTAN-I Program, fielding operatives whose effectiveness was unquestionable, despite some severe drawbacks. The later SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III Programs would build on the success of ORION, using children to better fit the augmentation requirements, training them and fielding them using state-of-the-art powered armour. The dramatic success of these two programs, both creating and fielding operatives who surpassed any warfighter in the history of human warfare, would play an integral role in the survival of the human race against the Covenant war machine. These were not the only programs, however. The Marine Corps, Army and Air Force all set up their own powered armour and supersoldier programs, with varying degrees of success - the Air Force would abandon its augmentation project, and would eventually adopt the ARONDIGHT series of combat armour systems. Both the Army and the Marine Corps would pour money into augmentation research projects, including GENONE and CHISEL, and set up their own supersoldier programs. The Marine Corps ran TROJAN; the Army set up VOLSUNG, aka. Special Warfare Group Nineteen. Rather than kidnapping more children and training and augmenting them, the initiators of both TROJAN and VOLSUNG decided to return to the roots of the SPARTAN Program - ORION. Former ORION operatives were recruited as advisors and trainers, and volunteers were recruited from each respective branch. While TROJAN would recruit a high number of volunteers, its use of untested augmentation materials and procedures would see a high mortality rate. VOLSUNG would use procedures gained secretly from SPARTAN-III, and would have a much lower mortality rate, only 10%, but assembled a smaller initial roster - only twenty for the first generation of VOLSUNG personnel. Successive generations would improve on these procedures and use more personnel, inverting the trend compared to TROJAN, eventually producing two hundred Volsung personnel, in twenty special warfare teams operated by the UNSC Army. The key difference between TROJAN and VOLSUNG, however, was its development of powered assault armour with which it equipped its field operatives. After the conclusion of the Great War, Operation: VORAUSSICHT would turn its attention to VOLSUNG and TROJAN, and although a small number of personnel were prosecuted for breaching November Black-classified projects, most VOLSUNG personnel would continue to operate, and further generations were approved by CENTCOM. History With more than a dozen SPARTAN-II and hundreds of SPARTAN-III personnel seeing deployment in combat operations against Insurrectionist and Covenant targets, the effectiveness of augmented warfighters was proven beyond any doubt. There were, however, problems in both projects - they relied too heavily on genetic profiling, restricting the number of available personnel for recruitment, and also depended on using prepubescent children to better fit the augmentation procedures and improve success rates. In the latter, SPARTAN-III would pioneer augmentation advancements and improve mortality rates dramatically, building on information gained from Projects GENOME and CHISEL. According to Ackerson, these procedures might someday be applied even to personnel outside of the genetic parameters of the SPARTAN-II and III Programs - that day was much nearer than even Ackerson suspected. Begun in 2535, Project VOLSUNG was an attempt by the UNSC Army Special Warfare Command to produce its own equivalent to the successful ORION Project of the CMA. Run in parallel with Project TROJAN, VOLSUNG used some shared material and personnel, such as former ORION operatives for training and advisory purposes, though it was nevertheless conducted autonymously under the Army's SpecWarCom chain of command and had slightly different objectives. While TROJAN focused purely on augmentation and training, VOLSUNG also aimed to improve the arsenal of weapons and equipment available to SpecWarCom warfighters, modernising some and replacing others. The most radical aspect of VOLSUNG was its aim to reintroduce powered armour as a viable option for unaugmented personnel. Originally, it made use of the improvements being gradually phased in by Project ARONDIGHT, but as VOLSUNG progressed and the success of its first generation became apparent, the Army would increase its research budget, hoping to develop a full powered armour series for use by special forces operatives. The SIGURD Mark I through IV would see deployment during the Great War to great effect, but would be replaced afterwards by the VAJRA-III Mark I through XII series of armour systems, incorporating advances that were unavailable to its predecessors, including energy shield and DEW technology developed by Project EXCALIBUR. VOLSUNG's acquisition of EXCALIBUR assets would spark an inquiry, and although no arrests were made four junior assistants were dismissed and dishonourable discharged for their part in the acquisition of classified materials. The first generation of VOLSUNG personnel was begun in 2535 using a total of twenty experienced special warfare personnel. Four ORION personnel were hired by the Army on an advisory capacity, and for additional training. While each volunteer was a combat veteran, either against the Insurrection or the Covenant, but ORION personnel faced problems that they would have no experience with - enhanced reflexes and strength would produce movement problems, making the augmentees clumsy and uncertain during the initial adjustment period. Worse, potential problems with augmentation acceptance by the augmentees was a major concern - the mortality rate of ORION and SPARTAN-II had many of VOLSUNG's head personnel nervous, and the improvements by SPARTAN-III did little to allay them. Of these twenty, only two would die during the augmentation process, SPC F. Tanner and SGT. U. Ulysses, and the other eighteen would experience few permanent side-effects. This initial generation, designated Special Warfare Team JAGUAR. Retroactively, they were also assigned Assault Group Aleph, using the Semetic alphabet as the basis for its designations. With ORION personnel getting Assault Group Aleph back up to combat readiness over the next five months, JAGUAR would see deployment in early 2536 during Operation: VENERATION, staging an assault against a Covenant staging point sixteen lightyears past the UNSC's outer boundaries. The operation was an uncontestable success, destroying an enemy space station, thirty ships and hundreds of personnel, rendering it useless to the Covenant, all with only two losses to SpecWar Team JAGUAR. Subsequent deployments on Minister against Insurrectionist attempts to overthrow the pro-UNSC government would reinforce the Army's faith in JAGUAR and VOLSUNG in general. Now backed personally by Lieutenant General Richard Emmerich, the second generation of VOLSUNG, Assault Group Beth, was begun in 2540 and produced ninety warfighters - SpecWar Teams PANTHER, LYNX and CARACAL. Furthermore, the Lieutenant General begun the PAE subsection to develop powered armour for the members of VOLSUNG, hoping at the least that it would restart the UNSC's interest in non-Spartan combat exoskeleton systems. The initial prototypes borrowed heavily from the Marine Corps earlier CYCLOPS series, bulky and mechanical. The decision was eventually made to adopt the ARONDIGHT series of improvements being introduced into service among the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, at least in the interim. VORAUSSICHT investigators suspect that the Lieutenant General ordered two subordinates to acquire stolen EXCALIBUR material for use in reengineering VOLSUNG's own systems, though the actual theft itself was conducted by other personnel, and the material stolen was related to improvements being researched by the VAJRA-II subgroup of Project: MJOLNIR. Afterwards, improvement was rapid - early prototypes became smaller, more compact, and streamlined. Later acquisitions made by these two subordinates, possibly without the Lieutenant General's orders, would see the adoption of limited energy shield technology and DEW offensive systems for the SIGURD Mark II and III PAE systems, and the SIGURD Mark IV would refine these further. During the Great War, Assault Group Aleph and Beth would operate these suits in combat deployments against Covenant forces on seven different colony worlds to great effect in materiel recovery, personnel extraction or assassination, and general combat situations. After the war, many of the EXCALIBUR materials would see widespread introduction into service, rendering the SIGURD series out of date. In conjunction with Project: VAJRA-III, a research and development program run by the Military Intelligence Division, VOLSUNG would replace their SIGURD suits with more advanced VAJRA-III armour suits, starting with the V-IIIB through to the V-IIIJ at the start of the Second Great War. These suits were first field tested by the third generation of VOLSUNG operatives, Assault Group Gimel, composed of SpecWar Teams NIMRAVID, CHEETAH and LEOPARD, during Operation: TACK HAMMER in 2555. The success of VOLSUNG as a whole would inspire the Army to adopt the augmentations and training developed for these operatives ona wider scale on its Special Warfare Divisions. Several of these groups would take part in inter-branch operations, such as Operation: VORAUSSICHT, with SpecWar Teams LEOPARD and NIMRAVID participating in the investigation into illegal aspects of VOLSUNG, with the two teams staging a successful assault on an Insurrectionist base and extracting personnel who had infiltrated EXCALIBUR. Other teams would see deployment against the Governors of Contrition, fighting on dozens of worlds in UNSC, Sangheili and New Covenant territory. In summary, VOLSUNG would eventually be declared the UNSC Army's most effective special warfare unit besides the SPARTAN-III program. A number of operations would be conducted with joint assistance from Project TROJAN, which fielded more operatives of slightly superior quality but lacked the powered armour systems. It is a point of heated contention between TROJAN and VOLSUNG personnel which group was more successful, and bar fights between personnel from each have been extremely destructive. Unusually for an Army special warfare unit, one VOLSUNG team was detached from SpecWarCom and reassigned under NavSpecWar for Navy-controlled operations under the Office of Naval Intelligence. Rather than the SIGURD or even VAJRA-III powered armour, Special Warfare Team PUMA would pioneer use of the M16 Demi-God heavy assault exoskeleton. PUMA would participate in number of highly classified missions under ONI between 2550 and 2561, and subsequently were declared MIA by ONI after their final recorded operations. Subsequent investigations would reveal that their deaths had been faked by ONI to cover their desertion, and that they remained alive, serving as independent operators for their own goals. Personnel Project personnel * Lieutenant General Richard Emmerich - original commanding officer of the UNSC Army's Special Warfare Group Nineteen. Forced to retire from VOLSUNG by the investigation of Codename: RAINFALL into his involvement in acquiring stolen EXCALIBUR materiel. Later discovered murdered in his apartment in Washington D. C., URNA. *Brigadier General - commanding officer of Special Warfare Group Nineteen after 2552. Despite being a part of the Marine Corps chain of command, he agreed to head the project after overtures were made by the Military Intelligence Division, reorganising VOLSUNG and removing a number of personnel he deemed suspect. Former ORION Advisors * Sgt.Maj. Avery J. Johnson - a UNSC Marine Corps non-commissioned officer, Johnson was hired between 2535 and 2540 to advise VOLSUNG in its inception phases, including the potential problems that VOLSUNG operatives might face. His supplemental training would be invaluable, even after his reassignment to a Naval Special Warfare unit. After his death in 2552, Johnson would be referred to as "VOLSUNG ONE" in a Chicago memorial by his VOLSUNG coworkers. * Lt. Rene Valfaman - UNSC Army ORION operative, commander of a special warfare unit, reassigned to VOLSUNG after Johnson's departure in 2540. As an advisor, Valfaman would deal with a number of problems stemming from lingering concerns among the Army leadership, setting to work to convince doubters that the results of Assault Group Aleph were replicable in Assault Group Beth. Valfaman was killed in action during the invasion of Reach, though he would use a SIGURD Mark III suit to allow four civilian shuttles to escape the combat theatre, subsequently designated VOLSUNG TWO after the end of the war. * SSgt. Henry Xoranth - UNSC Army ORION operative, recruited from retirement to assist in the creation of Assault Group Gimel. Became an active participant in VOLSUNG combat operations, seeing combat in three combat theatres alongside his VOLSUNG recruits, and is affectionately referred to as VOLSUNG THREE despite surviving. Assault Group Aleph (2536) *Special Warfare Team One (SpecWarTeam LEOPARD) Assault Group Beth (2540) *Special Warfare Team Two (SpecWarTeam PANTHER) *Special Warfare Team Three (SpecWarTeam LYNX) *Special Warfare Team Four (SpecWarTeam CARACAL) *Special Warfare Team Five (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Six (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Seven (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Eight (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Nine (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Ten (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Eleven (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) Assault Group Gimel (2553) *Special Warfare Team Twelve (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Thirteen (SpecWarTeam NIMRAVID) *Special Warfare Team Fourteen (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Fifteen (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Sixteen (SpecWarTeam PUMA) *Special Warfare Team Seventeen (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Eighteen (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Nineteen (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Twenty (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) *Special Warfare Team Twenty One (SpecWarTeam JAGUAR) *Special Warfare Team Twenty Two (SpecWarTeam CLASSIFIED) Equipment ARONDIGHT While VOLSUNG personnel would pioneer the use of powered combat armour, their initial attempts would be seen as lacklustre by SpecWarCom. Producing several failed prototypes, though with some interesting ideas that would be carried over to later SIGURD and VAJRA-III armour, the decision was eventually made by Lieutenant General Richard Emmerich to use materiel from Project ARONDIGHT, both to cut costs and to field-test the already advanced units. Some preliminary work had already been accomplished with members of the 427th Marine Regiment, who had also collaborated with the original Project: VAJRA, but with the commissioning of Assault Group ALEPH it would be VOLSUNG personnel continuing the testing processes. With VOLSUNG deployment, ARONDIGHT armour components and complementary equipment would see extensive combat deployment on seven worlds in addition to the laboratory testing, and information gathered from the supersoldier personnel would lead to dramatic improvements in the armour. Some DEW protection would be sacrificed for the same of mobility, while new materials developed by Project EXCALIBUR would be used to compensate. During VOLSUNG's involvement with ARONDIGHT, they would see combat against Covenant forces on seven frontline colonies, and against Insurrectionist terror cells on another four Inner Colonies. Nevertheless, SpecWarCom would begin development on an improved series, replacing the ARONDIGHT with the parallel-developed SIGURD Powered Assault Exoskeleton. SIGURD Powered Assault Exoskeleton While powered armour was largely the domain of the Navy and Marine Corps, with the MJOLNIR series and Cyclops system entering deployment, many other projects were undertaken by the other service branches, although as yet with far less impressive results. While many personnel from VAJRA were now working on MJOLNIR in the VAJRA-II subsection, the Army nevertheless managed to acquire a good many experienced developers from civilian and military sectors for work on its own powered armour project - the SIGURD. Rather than a bulky exoskeleton like the Cyclops, the SIGURD was invisage more as a counterpart to the MJOLNIR, though obviously the hindered performance of the wearers would force developers to restrict its capabilities - in fact, this would prove to be an advantage of the armour, allowing the production team to use off-the-shelf technologies and concepts to dramatically cut costs. The results would nevertheless be effective - significant boosts to strength, reaction time, and durability would produce a combat armour system far superior to standard Army or Marine Corps infantry-issue. With the deployment of the Mark I, the SIGURD PAE would be the standard combat armour system of all VOLSUNG personnel. Nevertheless, there were some problems with the SIGURD Mark I - several components using experimental designs or materials would prove fragile, often breaking down in the field at less than convenient times. Problems with the suit's onboard electronics suite would eventually be fixed, and totally replaced with a system "appropriated" from MJOLNIR and combined with the VISR program originally developed for the Semi-Powered Armour series used by SPARTAN-III personnel. More unusually, the helmet was deemed to be too intimidating - with the UNSC trying to fight a war to win the hearts and minds of its own people, the intimidating headgear of the Mark I was considered by some among SpecWarCom to be a liability. In the face of these problems, they requested an update to the design - the SIGURD Mark II. Entering service in 2542, the Mark II improved on its predecessor - physically, it still remained intimidating, though not to the extent of the Mark I. Technically, the suit made use of more EXCALIBUR-developed improvements to further reduce weight and improve survivability, and trimmed some elements of the design to imprve lower-body mobility. The helmet would also include thermal regulation, a major complaint of the previous iteration of the SIGURD, improving the comfort of the wearer and thus performance. Though all of the modifications made were minor, so many were made that the resulting armour would perform far better than the Mark I, and it was quickly adopted by the VOLSUNG operators. VAJRA-III Powered Assault Exoskeleton , the VAJRA-III Powered Armour would be the pinnacle of general-service Powered Armour, and efforts were made by the military to increase its use among non-VOLSUNG combat units.]] Although VAJRA-II primarily worked on the MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armour series, they would also be contracted by ONI to develop a number of non-Spartan equipment types, in exchange for which they would be granted to classified materials for further development. As part of this deal, VAJRA-II began work on a new powered assault exoskeleton for use by VOLSUNG and other similarly-augmented personnel, using innovations made by past development on MJOLNIR. Started in early 2552, the armour would use highly classified materials and equipment to radically improve on past VOLSUNG equipment - improvements in neural conduction through the interface would allow far superior reaction times, and in turn allow higher combat performance, in strength and speed. While the results would roughly equate to an unarmoured SPARTAN-II, it was nevertheless a major success and was approved for full-scale production by SpecWarCom. Issued in early July, 2552, the new armour would be codenamed VAJRA-III, and would see first deployment in both the Minorca and Reach combat theatres before Reach's fall and the withdrawal to Earth. , a former TROJAN operative, wearing a prototype of the VAJRA-III before its introduction]] The destruction of Reach would hinder production, but post-war development would further refine the armour to improve VOLSUNG performance. The inclusion of both form-fitting electromagnetic shields, as well as deployable solid-light barriers, would give the VOLSUNG personnel unparalleled protection, and by the start of the War of Vengeance the VOLSUNG operators were considered as indispensable to the UNSC as SPARTAN-III personnel, if not quite as capable. During the resulting conflict, the VAJRA-III would prove itself a capable armour system, adaptable and flexible in the field while providing superior mobility and protection for its wearer, as well as intercompatible with a number of other advanced projects, such as SPI and MJOLNIR. The fact that the suit also cost less than SPI was also a deciding factor in its adoption by SpecWarCom, and during the early years of the Second Great War both the Army and Marine Corps would express interest in mass-production of the armour for general infantry/riflemen. Remarks * "After the war, the augmentations would become standard fare on special warfare personnel. We're not exactly Spartans, but we're closer than anyone else since ORION." * "I'd say they single-handedly saved non-Spartan powered armour research. After VAJRA-I collapsed, and the less than stellar results of ARONDIGHT, the VOLSUNG Powered Assault Exoskeleton is the only suit to enter service since the Cyclops. It may not be MJOLNIR, but it's something. And don't get me started on VAJRA-III!" * "Johnson was a legend in VOLSUNG - he was professional, he was likeable, and above all he was one lethal Mike Foxtrot. When we heard he'd bit the dust at the Ark, I don't mind telling you there were a few teary eyes in the room." * "VOLSUNG wasn't classified November Black, but it used materials from EXCALIBUR, which was - that was probably why VORAUSSICHT was pressured to drop its harrassment. After Emmerich retired and his two henchmen were dishonourably discharged, that was the end of our involvement in EXCALIBUR. And lets not get into our history with CHISEL..." * "Some people call the Brigadier General VOLSUNG FOUR. I don't know if its official yet, or if it will be, but he's definitely an improvement over bloody Emmerich. Though that wouldn't be hard, the number of black ops he had running on the side."